Nebraska Heading to Big Ten, Big 12 Likely Dead (Update)

By Lynn Freehill in Blog on June 11, 2010 at 1:52 pm | 3 Comments

Are you excited? You should be. After all, college football is changing FOREVER and we all get to watch. This is history being made, people. Cherish it.

The big question right now is: will Nebraska head to the Big Ten and give it 12 teams, leaving the Big 12 temporarily with just 10? Also, the Pac-10 has 11 teams because Colorado already jumped ship to go hang out with the co-eds at Arizona State. Up is down, black is white, it’s raining cats and dogs!

Anyways, the answer to the question: Most likely

Yes. Nebraska is gone, as of me being half-way done writing this post.

Until the Nebraska regents formally decide to go to the Big Ten (a formality, really,) the only knowns are these: Colorado is going to the Pac-10 and Boise State (those perennial BCS-busters) are upgrading from the WAC to the Mountain West Conference so they can beat TCU in the regular season, as well.

The most important thing in this whole melee is to figure out what it means for the Horns. It’s a little hazy right now, but following the generally held belief that Missouri will now follow Nebraska to the Big Ten, Texas, Oklahoma, Tech, Oklahoma State and A&M will get invites to match Colorado’s to the Pac-10.

This pillaging of the Big 12 South would leave the Big 12 with Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and Baylor. Colorado wrote their own ticket when they accepted their invite early, because they knew Texas legislators were circling the wagons to get all four Texas schools to be invited. So, sorry Baylor, but hey, look at it this way: maybe y’all will get above .500 soon.

Texas would head out west with the rest of the teams and join Arizona and Arizona State in what is being dubbed the “Pac-16 East” division with the eight remaining original Pac-10 schools making up the “West” division. This would allow us to keep most of the rivalries we’ve maintained, (unless the Aggies bolt for the SEC) while adding new ones like USC and Oregon.

EXCEPT, the Ducks kicked their star quarterback off the team for stealing laptops from the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house and USC just received the modern-day death penalty with a two-year post-season ban, a loss of 30 scholarships, and their juniors- and seniors-to-be can all transfer to another school without having to sit a year. So… not quite as enticing as it was a week ago, but at least UT should only have to compete with OU for the right to play for the national championship. At least one Big 12 tradition will continue!

So the cast-offs from the Big 12 — Kansas, K-State, Iowa State, and Baylor — will most likely join the Mountain West Conference; the Big Ten will poach some Big East teams (and maybe Notre Dame) the SEC will probably take West Virginia from the Big East while taking Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, and Florida State from the ACC, who in turn will take the scraps of the Big East. Whew.

AND the Big East will disappear along with the Big 12, the Mountain West Conference will join the spotlight as the fifth-best league with clout and the Big-16, the SEC, the ACC, and the Pac-16 will battle every year for complete world domination.

Texas officials are meeting Tuesday to discuss the whole thing, but uh… there’s not much surprise in what’s going to happen. Most likely UT will head west with the rest of the south, plus Colorado and minus Baylor and maybe the Aggies. Things will be different, except for the times when they won’t.

(Update: So it looks like everything is happening as predicted, according to “a highly-placed official from a Big 12 school” Statesman’s Kirk Bohls reports, though A&M is still on the fence with 72 hours to decide between the SEC and the Pac-10. This also gives Baylor a window to sneak back into the move to the Pac-10 should the Aggies decide to join the SEC. If the Aggies did join the SEC it would finally allow them to emerge from the shadow of UT and win at least three BCS championships in the next decade due to the weaker competition in the SEC. Also, UT Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds issued a statement regarding the state of the Big 12. Jump with me won’t you?)

 

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“Our goals and hopes all along have been to keep the Big 12 Conference intact. The league has been great for its members. We also have been honorable, up front and forthright with regard to our work and responsiveness to all the possible and now definitive changes to conference landscapes. We are entrusted with the esponsibility of administering our university athletics programs. That requires careful examination of any and all options. It is both premature and inappropriate to speculate on what our UT System Regents will discuss at next Tuesday’s meeting. But, as the dynamics of the Big 12 continue to change around us, we will utilize additional time to continue our work and evaluate our options.”